lets rock!
LET THERE BE ROCK!

The Music Industry is in crisis again. It’s been in crisis forever - in fact, I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t in crisis. Sales have been dropping ever since recorded history began.

But the fact is that, like anything, if something doesn’t adapt to the world around it will not survive. Sheet music, wax cylinder, all gone – and rightly so. The industry has blindly gone on, ruthlessly exploited the public wherever possible, and sold us what we already own on smaller, shinier formats for twice the price for decades. Now that everyone has either replaced their vinyl collection (or simply don’t care) that there isn’t much else for them to sell us. Maybe they could revive wax cylinders?

We’ve seen too many boy bands chasing too little pocket money for too many years to have even the vaguest interest in such things anymore. Their songs are just adverts for albums, their albums just excuses to take money from fools, and the product they are selling : sex, companionship, whatever it is, is always promised and never delivered.

Modern pop music leaves me cold. Not because its no good, but because its too cynical. There’s no personality, no honesty, no genius. Everything is calculated towards shifting units. No one seems interested in making great records that will be selling in ten years or even ten months time. You never get the feeling that the song matters to them : the only thing they seem to be interested in is getting seen on the telly and taking pretty blondes home.

Instead of trying to create great art that will last forever, the industry is far too interested in exploiting markets ruthlessly. Creating markets, creating genetically modified groups, finding and identifying markets and then creating product to exploit it. That’s what modern music is geared around - extracting money from people. But as always, the industry is looking in the wrong place – it’s trying to create a market when there is an already huge market it just seems to be ignoring.

There are already markets that exist, markets ready to be exploited, consisting of affluent thirtysomething : certainly more profitable than teenies. So they’re not cool anymore, and they don’t exactly gain column inches as easily as the empty musings of the retro-obsessed sons of millionaires who endlessly try and fail to bottle the genius of Blondie, but in an industry that craves sales, why not flock to a market that’s there and frankly gasping for product?

Lets do some basic maths. Morrissey has sold at least twenty million records, released about twenty five albums and about fifty singles. Or, if you want to think about it, one album for every third person in the United Kingdom. And he can’t get a deal. Record companies don’t want to sign him because they don’t think there’s a market for him : instead they’re trying to get Radiohead to be his backing band. And Morrissey packs out the Albert Hall at £30 a ticket for two nights in a row. But apparently, there’s no market for him.

Bullshit. The music industry needs to stop talking out of it’s arse and trying and realise that it isn’t an elbow.

The Sisters Of Mercy meanwhile, with an average of a million sales per album, still headline festivals across Europe every summer and average playing to 6,000 people a night – despite not having released a record in thirteen years. And yet, record labels state simply that those kind of sales just aren’t commercial enough and there’s no interest in the band. A million sales per album, and that isn’t a ‘major label’ band?

In the meantime, redundant and much less-impressive names – such as Sting, and even Ubfucking40 – churn out any old rubbish and flood the market with endless useless tat and empty, meaningless songs written by people who simply are too rich and too comfortable to do anything worth listening to. There’s no hunger, no desire, nothing to make these songs worth listening to even once, let alone buying.

And even Blur, now lost in the world of contractual obligation albums and being super-rich, are disappearing down that blind alley of meaningless, irrelevant bullshit instead of making music that matters or means anything. But if you want to read about their new album, look here.

That’s what’s wrong with the industry. It’s ignoring huge markets, and ignoring the will of the people. Set on an arrogant path, and hoping that the general public will just turn around and meekly follow like the chastised children we are.

But you know the rules of capitalism : give the people what they want or go out of business. If the public were offered the records they wanted they’d go and buy them. That’s why the industry is on its knees. It’s that simple. Let’s rock!
- posted by Mark @ 10:07 pm